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Yorkshire Water Demonstrates the Importance of Keeping Jobs Local

It may not be a policy or practice which the company officially adopts, but judging by the manner in which Yorkshire Water conducts its business, one would assume that this water supply and water waste management company is run by a core staff that is very much part of the local community it serves. This goes a long way in demonstrating the importance of keeping jobs local, a practice which many companies and businesses from all over the world could perhaps learn from.

Uniquely Tailored Services

When a company serves their community on a local level and would then naturally employ people from that community first, their operational methodology falls directly in line with the unique needs of that community and so they can tailor their offering according to those specific need. In the specific case of Yorkshire Water, this is demonstrated through their approach to providing their primary service of supplying water and managing waste water. Where a more globalised business would have perhaps stuck to a generic approach that works to bring in the profits wherever it is they do business, Yorkshire Water takes into account some other considerations which one could say are unique to the areas they serve.

It’s about more than just building and maintaining pipelines or refurbishing reservoirs. The Yorkshire Woodland Cultural Heritage Unearthing Project comes to mind as a great example, with nearly half a million pounds allocated to it.

Being a major landowner in the South Pennines (the company owns 300 hectares), it could very well have been all about maximising profits by building the sort of infrastructure geared towards that, all around the reservoirs situated on that land. Instead, Yorkshire Water could definitely be credited with contributing the creation of more local jobs, whether they employ community workers directly or if they just have a hand in the creation of jobs.

For this particular project a Woodland Heritage Officer was appointed, leading the delegation of representatives of the company and its partners’ commitment to going beyond their normal business and making something like the conservation of their community’s natural heritage a priority.

Cost Savings

Ultimately though, keeping jobs local is a practice which has a great cost-saving knock-on effect. Not all companies were meant to go public and list on the stock exchange and in fact some of the best companies that this world has to offer are privately run. The very best of these follow the old model of society-construction where the services rendered and goods produced are localised. So a localised water company such as Yorkshire Water would prove to be much more valuable to the people of the community it serves because the people can in some cases walk to the company’s offices should they have any problems, queries or suggestions, or indeed if they want to take part in the many community development-geared initiatives the company has to offer.

If water supply was otherwise a nationalised service, there’d probably be a distinct lack of engagement and the basic things needed to be done would perhaps take much longer.